Beijing Expats Decry “Click-bait-y” Reports About a Christmas Crackdown
Reports of China’s Grinch-iness have been greatly exaggerated. At least that’s what a number of Beijing expats are saying in lieu of international news articles about a crackdown on Christmas in the Middle Kingdom.
“I’m going to be so busy whenever I go home and have to say over and over again: ‘Yeah, but China is not really like what you saw on CNN,’” RF Parsley, a Canadian expat working in the capital, tells the Beijinger.
Parsley recently joined a chorus of expats on Twitter decrying articles by the likes of the Associated Press (via Australia’s ABC) headlined “China's government is cracking down on Christmas festivals across the country.”
Another Canadian expat, who asked to remain anonymous, calls such reporting “BS,” especially given the glitzy Christmas motif he saw at Beijing’s The Place shopping plaza on Christmas Day. He posted a video of those gleaming decorations on Instagram, before telling TBJ that they were “beautiful” and he was “ laughing at how every worker was dressed up in Santa costumes. It was Xmas everywhere.”
He went on say that: “media companies probably need to get their facts straight." He concedes that anti-Christmas measures might be "happening in some small cities, but it's not happening everywhere. Every mall and store I went to in Beijing was full of workers dressed as Santa, decorations and Christmas songs. It was almost too much!”
Parsley agrees, saying he was content to ignore the first such article he saw, but then felt compelled to speak out on Twitter after more stories of that ilk “flooded my timeline.”
Many Beijing expats are quick to admit that the AP article does indeed report on anti-Christmas sentiment in smaller cities like Langfang, rather than foreigner rife first-tier locales like Beijing and Shanghai. But such nuances are not, in their view, reflected in the headlines, and are in turn lost on many readers. Therefore, instead of having arguments about disparities between first-tier cities and smaller towns, which might be more valid, Beijing expats are left to balk at broad stroke statements by onlookers from abroad:
As an expat living in China, Parsley calls such reporting “dismaying.” He feels “too many foreign media outlets are becoming click-bait-y. They seem to just want sensational headlines.”
It’s all aptly summed up by Eric Hundman, an assistant professor at NYU Shanghai, who Tweeted: “A lesson in caution about reading China reporting: ‘Santa’s not coming: Towns across China ban Christmas’” in reference to another AP article (via Japanese news outlet Asahi).
Hundman ended that Tweet bluntly: “Meanwhile, in Shanghai on Christmas Eve, hundreds of people were taking selfies and buying snacks at the Jing’an Kerry Center Christmas Market.”
More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
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Photos: Tour Beijing, The Daily Mail, RF Parsley's Twitter account, Peter Jolicoeur's Twitter account, Eric Hundman
